Where Childhood Ends
by kaho.co
Summary: Cloti one-shot. Set around the time when Cloud, Tifa, and Marlene start a family of three.


Sitting on the bed, I pat my wet hair with a towel, and look about the room. The sheets and pillowcases are clean. A mug and a magazine on the nightstand. The trinkets that I'm not sure belong to which one of us.

This is what we share. A room. A life.

It all started with Marlene's declaration of independence.

"I'm not sharing this room with you anymore."

The day her adoptive father Barret left Edge to embark on his personal journey, we decided to take the day off and close the diner. The three of us had dinner together and chatted like any other day. Maybe we were trying to pretend it was just like any other day without explicitly saying so to one another.

And just like any other day Marlene and I took a shower together, and it was when I was drying her delicate, chestnut-coloured hair on a towel, being careful to not tangle it, that she said those words. My hands stopped what they were doing.

I can't remember exactly what my response was like. She wasn't asking for permission, it was a statement.

"You're not?"

I believe it was something like that, rather half-baked, because I was caught off guard and wasn't prepared to give any better answer. My tone was pretty much in the same way as I'd say, "That so?" in response to someone commenting, "It's going to rain today."

"Mhm. I'm a big girl now so you're sleeping in there from today on."

My eyes followed where her index finger pointed, which turned out to be Cloud's bedroom.

She then pushed a pillow into my arms and tucked herself in, leaving no space for me. I gathered that her somewhat hurried motion was her way of reiterating she wasn't accepting any protest.

Having no alternative, with the pillow in my arms, I turned out the lights and headed out to Cloud's room.

"Marlene kicked me out."

"What?"

"She's a big girl now and she doesn't need a bedtime companion so I'm sleeping here. That's, what she said."

He blinked, his mouth slightly parted, looking the same way I must've looked just a few minutes ago.

I found the situation I was in funny, standing at the threshold, hugging a pillow to my chest, like a small child sneaking into her parents' room after a nightmare. l knew Cloud found it funny too as a smile formed on his face and we both let out a laugh.

It wasn't the first time for us spending nights together alone, but that particular night, looking back, we were a bit shy and tentative, because it in fact had been a while.

So like that, starting with a pillow, his bedroom became our bedroom. In the days and weeks that followed, some knickknacks were added here and some pieces of furniture were moved there.

And just like that, Marlene's bedroom became her own sacred space, where we are welcome anytime, but an invisible shield is looming tall.

But it's still in my arms that she falls asleep every night. I'm in charge of looking after her nighttime routine, like brushing teeth and bathing, and every night when I hold her on my lap to dry her hair, she gives in to sleep. Then I (sometimes Cloud and I take turns with this part), carry her to her bed, careful to not wake her. It's just an unvarying, everyday routine that doesn't need a special mention. But it is, for me, an endearing and sacred ritual all the same.

It's not rare that her precociousness astonishes me. I can find fragments of it in her words and demeanour often, probably more often than I would like. Because it's a sign of a child forced to grow up too fast. She's been through way too many things for her age,and I can't help but feel a pang of pity sometimes.

So when she, unwittingly or otherwise, lets out any remnants of a little girl that she should be allowed to be by all means, a warm feeling fills me and it makes me want to smile and cry at the same time. Especially when I know it's not going to last forever. She will one day be too big to sit on my lap.

Cloud quietly slips into the room, careful to not wake Marlene sleeping in her room. He is drying his hair on a towel too.

"Sorry."

"Never mind."

While Marlene and I were taking a shower earlier, we accidentally emptied the hot water tank. The utility supply is still not stable in this makeshift city, so we are mindful to be sparing on how much we use. We fill the tub only once a week and for the rest we make do with shower only. Inconvenient for sure, but once anything has become a routine, we can manage. But today, I guess we got a little too forgiving and used up our quota, leading to poor Cloud having to take a cold shower.

It shouldn't be just me being apologetic that makes him look paler than he already is.

"But I do." I touch his cheek, feeling the coldness that I knew would be there.

He takes my hand and brings it to his lips. The next moment his lips are on mine, they were cold to the touch. Soon enough though, heat replaces cold. His hand slips in from under the hem of my T shirt, sending shivers all over my body. His kiss deepens, as if he's trying to contain the shivers.

I don't feel shy about exposing my bare skin to him anymore. My everything to him. I want him to unearth what's hidden in the deepest bottom of my being. He's the only one who can.

While my body gets keener and keener to his every touch and move, my mind goes the other way and gets foggier and foggier. Thoughts and memories lose their forms, and I see his eyes looking into mine like pale flames shimmering in the dark. Nothing else matters, except for the name of this man that slips out of my lips in a whisper.

"Funny."

This is. Cloud remains silent.

Funny that I find it comforting, pleasant even, my cheek being pressed to his bare chest that still has a sheen of sweat. Feeling someone's sweat on your skin shouldn't be the standard definition of comforting, come to think of it.

Many things have become the new normal.

Guilt has never left me. But when it comes, it's not an ambush anymore. It is like a breeze periodically coming through an airhole carved on life. Life in continuum.

I feel his fingers drawing circles on my exposed shoulder, then he stops.

"Sleepy?" I ask, then he runs his fingers in my still damp hair.

"No, I'm alright."

"It's funny that life goes on like this."

It's funny, I think again, that underneath his skin are a network of vessels carrying warm blood all over his body, and the heart, pumping and drumming, and all the other tissues and organs doing their job to keep him alive, without their owner's knowledge.

"Tifa,"

"No, listen." I rise on my elbows and look down at him, who is on his back looking back at me.

"We've been through a lot. We both could've been dead ten times over."

When I reunited with him for the first time after many years and looked into these eyes that bore the colour of lifestream, I felt a little scared, but not anymore. It's become part of the man I love.

"But every time, we survived."

"Right." I say, and place my hand on his chest.

"For the lack of better words, you're one hell of a survivor."

"I can throw that right back to you."

We laugh, and I lay on my back next to him, sensing in the corner of my eye he's watching me. These small laughs we share over trivial things, I find so precious and dear.

"I guess it's life's way of saying, just suck it up and live." I say. We both remain quiet.

"But sometimes I get wrapped up in my thoughts, I just can't help it."I say and sigh.

''It might take time, you know."I say then look at him, and find him watching, smiling.

"Take as much as you need."

When he smiles those gentle smiles, it makes me so happy I want to cry.

I wonder how I came to sleep in my own room alone when I was little. I try to recall, but to no avail. Maybe it had been so from day one. I can't help but wonder, why do we seek independency growing up, only to go look for someone to share a life with?

He reaches out his arm to hold me. We both remain content and quiet, then soon all I hear is his breathing, regular and peaceful.

It must be written in our cells, that we find it comforting to feel someone's skin on us. Being an adult or child doesn't matter. It just makes your eyelids heavy and lulls you into sleep. If I can be that someone who can give that to Cloud and Marlene, then it should be enough in and of itself. It may be precarious to shoulder my reason to live on someone else, but that's what we all do.

In his arms, I feel like a butterfly. Trapped in a net, not knowing it's caught, flapping its dreamy wings.

But I know. I chose to be trapped.

Then I realize, perhaps, that's where childhood is forever lost.


End file.
